Sweet peas, sweet orchids, sweet autumn earth,
sweet autumn earth knifed down with iron,
with steel toed boots and hammering labor,
pure scent twisted with diesel drivers,
then the burning asphalt and smoldering,
smoking black oak ashes,
and the woods all seem so helpless here,
the river seems like it’s really on the run,
and I stride through the darkness of the logging road,
looking at the shadows behind the cans of beer,
kicking aside crushed Marlboro and bail bond matches.
On a hill beyond the valley
there’s a splotch of seeded grass
rising from the chainsaw hopes
of a loggers contrition, strange gesture,
but at least they try,
at least it’s green.
And then there’s that smell of flesh and fur,
of rotted fish and turned skunk grass,
and it feels kind of sickening,
this aftermath,
it feels like time dividing up the hours:
here’s one for the land and two for man,
and the more the crunch the less the time,
the less we have to call our own.
